law.--Marriage law necessary to fix paternal responsibility.--Malthus's
high ideal.--If prudence the motive, continence and celibacy violate no
law.--Post-nuptial intermittent restraint.--Ethics of prevention judged
by consequences.--When procreation is a good and when an
evil.--Oligantrophy.--Artificial checks are physiological sins._


"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He
him, male and female created He them, and God blessed them and God said
unto them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the
earth.'"--(Genesis i., 27-28). This commandment was repeated to Noah and
his sons.

Whether Moses was recording the voice of God, or interpreting a
physiological law is immaterial to this aspect of a great social
question. The fact remains that in obedience to a great law of life, all
living things are fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and
multiplication in a state of nature is limited only by space and food.

In a state of nature, reproduction is automatic, and only in this state
is this physiological law, or this divine command obeyed.

The reason of man intervenes, and interprets, and modifies this law.

A community of men becomes a social organism, calls itself a State, and
limits the law of reproduction. It decrees that the sexes shall, if they
pair, isolate themselves in pairs, and live in pairs whether inclined to
so live or not.

If the State has a right so to interpret and limit the law of